A Clean Sweep

Posted by Graham Wheeler on Wednesday, September 16, 2015

A long time ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth I was following an academic career. That got subverted but I enjoyed it while it lasted. Apart from graduate courses in compilers, I got to teach everything from computer architecture to assembly language programming to an introductory computing course for social science students.

When teaching assembly language (in which I was lucky enough to be able to use the M68000, a dream of a processor), one of the samples I used to illustrate a number of topics like multi-dimensional arrays, recursion and function pointers, was a Mine Sweeper game. I recently dug it out and turned in into Python just for the heck of it.

So here it is. There are no fancy graphics, the field is just printed out as a 2D array of ASCII characters. To enter a move you use coordinates using a number for the row and letter for the column. E.g. 1C is the first row, third column (rows are numbered from 1, not 0). You can plant a flag (or clear it) by preceding your move with a ‘-’.

At some point I might look at using PyQt or something to turn it into a mouse-driven more attractive looking game. But the interesting stuff is the recursive traversal of the board.

#!python
import random

DIMENSION = 8
MINES = 4
EXPOSED = 0x10
FLAG = 0x20
MINE = 0x40

exposed = 0

def traverse(field, r, c, fn):
    for row in [r-1, r, r+1]:
        if 0 <= row < DIMENSION:
            for col in [c-1, c, c+1]:
                if 0 <= col < DIMENSION and (row != r or col != c) and
                        not field[row][col] & EXPOSED:
                    fn(field, r, c, row, col)

def check_neighbor(field, r, c, row, col):
    field[r][c] += 1 if field[row][col] & MINE else 0

def init_field():
    field = [[0] * DIMENSION for i in range(0, DIMENSION)]
    # Place mines.
    m = MINES
    while m:
        r = random.randrange(DIMENSION)
        c = random.randrange(DIMENSION)
        if field[r][c] != MINE:
            m -= 1
            field[r][c] = MINE
    # Compute neighbor scores		
    for r in range(0, DIMENSION):
        for c in range(0, DIMENSION):
            if field[r][c] != MINE:
                traverse(field, r, c, check_neighbor)
    return field

def recursive_expose(field, r, c, row, col):
    global exposed
    cell = field[row][col]
    if cell < 0x10:  # Not a mine, flag or exposed
        exposed += 1
        field[row][col] |= EXPOSED
        if cell == 0:
            traverse(field, row, col, recursive_expose);

def expose(field, r, c):
    recursive_expose(field, 0, 0, r, c)
    return field[r][c] & MINE

def print_field(field):
    print('   ' + ''.join([chr(65 + i) for i in range(0, DIMENSION)]))
    for r in range(0, DIMENSION):
        cells = []
        for c in range(0, DIMENSION):
            if field[r][c] & FLAG:
                cells.append('F')  # no newline
            elif field[r][c] & EXPOSED:
                cells.append('*' if field[r][c] & MINE else chr(ord('0') + (field[r][c] & 0xf)))
            else:
                cells.append('#')
        print('%02d ' % (r + 1) + ''.join(cells))

field = init_field()
result = "CLEAR"
while exposed < (DIMENSION * DIMENSION - MINES):
    print_field(field)
    move = raw_input("Move?")
    r = int(move[:-1])
    c = ord(move[-1]) - 65
    if r < 0:
        field[-r - 1][c] ^= FLAG
    elif expose(field, r - 1, c):
        result = "BOOM!"
        break

print_field(field)
print(result)